


The Vastness of the Sky

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Airships, Dimension Travel, Gap Filler, Gen, Islands, Language Barrier, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2336549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Digory Kirke invites Polly Plummer to watch the 1912 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race with him, intending merely to catch up with his oldest friend. But lives once touched by magic never return altogether to normal, and when both crews sink in adverse weather, Digory and Polly stumble into a strange new world in search of a missing rower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Vastness of the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FiKate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiKate/gifts).



> This story is for **FiKate** , in response to the prompt: _I always wanted more Digory. Magician's Nephew is one of my favorite books due to how much worldbuilding is done in so few words. I want more of how Digory goes from the boy in the attic to the professor. How he searches out Narnia? What he learns? Anything since there's a lot I know I haven't even imagined. I love his sense of wonder. Did he talk for a long time with Lucy or Edmund after they returned? Whatever strikes your fancy, I'd love more of Digory and his history._
> 
> Thank you very much to [heliopausa](http://heliopausa.dreamwidth.org), [hypotheticalanomaly](http://hypotheticalanomaly.tumblr.com/), and [sablin27](http://sablin27.livejournal.com/) for beta-reading this story. You are all wonderful! :-)
> 
> (Some historical notes are available at the end of the fic.)

"Is it wise to be on the water in this weather?" Polly shouted in Digory's ear.

He turned to face her, keeping one hand clamped on his hat to prevent it blowing away in the wind. The sky was beautifully clear, the sun like a warm hand on his back, but the wind was halfway to a gale and from the northwest, fighting directly against the incoming tide. Getting out to Chiswick Eyot hadn't been any trouble earlier in the morning -- they had simply walked across the mud at low tide -- but with the tide coming in and the wind so strong, getting back to shore would be trickier. The Thames was not well pleased with humanity today.

Even so, as the saying went, the show must go on.

"Of course it's not wise!" he shouted back. "But where's the honor in playing it safe?"

Polly muttered something he failed to catch, though he thought it might include the word 'Charn.' Digory loftily chose to ignore this.

"The boats ought to be near Hammersmith Bridge by now, even accounting for the wind," he said. "We should see them in another minute or two."

"Assuming they haven't sunk," Polly said, clutching her own hat against a gust of wind.

"Oh ye of little faith." Digory edged a foot closer to the incoming tide, straining to see around the curve in the river. A momentary lull in the wind let the sound of the crowd filter over the water: a peculiar mix of excitement and dismay.

Then a bow lurched into view, dangerously low in the choppy water.

"It _is_ sinking," Polly said with some satisfaction. "Poor lads. Here, move back and wave your handkerchief to signal them. They'll want somewhere to land and this island is about the only place that hasn't been embanked."

"I should like to point out that the Cambridge boat is nowhere in sight," Digory said as he followed her orders, "which suggests that _your_ school sank well before mine."

They went several rounds on this old and well-loved argument while the various spectators around them also began to shout and beckon the foundering boat toward the eyot. The drenched crew ran nearly aground, then climbed out into the waist-deep water and began to lift their boat. Digory and a handful of other men waded forward to help them, as the weight of water made the task difficult.

"There, you see?" he remarked to Polly as he returned to dry land, his trousers drenched from the knees down. "Not wise in the slightest, but it seems your lot have given up whereas mine intend to continue."

Polly smiled and pointed toward a launch puttering up to the eyot. The umpire stood near the bow with a disapproving look on his face and was waving his arms at the Oxford crew as they wrung out their shirts and prepared to reembark. "I think Mr. Pitman disagrees," she said. "Besides, one of the rowers is missing."

Digory glanced back at the boat and realized she was right. There were only eight people gathered to argue with the umpire: seven rowers and the coxswain. "Bother. I wonder where he's got off to?"

Polly shrugged. "Who knows? Perhaps he spotted a friend and wanted to chat. Or perhaps he ducked behind a tree to attend to more private business."

Digory made a terrible face. "Journalism has been terrible for your sense of propriety. In either case, someone ought to find him before the rest of the crew notice he's missing. Shall we?"

"Let's," said Polly. "Make for the trees -- if he's near the water, someone else will find him easily enough."

They thrashed through the wild tangles of grass toward the still winter-bare willows that crowned the islet's center. In olden times, Digory thought to himself, Chiswick Eyot might have been a holy place, like Glastonbury Tor or Mont Saint-Michel. An in-between sort of land, neither wholly connected to the main body of England nor wholly separate like a true and proper island. A doorway, if you would, between the mundane and the holy.

Or perhaps a more literal sort of door, he realized as he saw a queer shimmer between the arching branches of two willows. It looked almost like sunlight glancing off dew-soaked cobwebs, but the branches and buds of the surrounding trees, which ought to have been visible through the strands, had been replaced by swirling, impenetrable shadows.

"Polly. Is that--?" he asked as he slowed.

"It's definitely magic," Polly agreed.

"Well," said Digory, at a temporary loss for words. He knew England was not as devoid of magic and miracles as most people thought -- having a magician for an uncle will do that to a person -- but since he and Polly had returned from the newborn world of Narnia, he had only read suspiciously vague newspaper articles and once or twice caught glimpses of an odd spark in passing strangers' faces that seemed to say, _"I have gone beyond the world you know, and returned to tell the tale."_ He had not seen any further magic with his own eyes. He had begun to think he never would again.

And now here was a gate, shimmering with potential.

"Ten gets you one our missing rower stumbled through it, and whatever's on the other side doesn't look very hospitable," Polly said.

"Bugger," Digory said with great feeling. "We shall have to go after him, shan't we."

He liked his life in Oxford: liked his rooms, his books, and the steady progress he was making toward his doctorate in philosophy. The last time he'd had an adventure, he'd mucked the whole thing up and brought evil into a bright new world. He had spent years teaching himself not to let his curiosity race ahead of his common sense.

Even so, they really were the best choice to retrieve the missing rower. And teaching oneself to look before leaping never quite removes the urge to leap in the first place.

"Don't be a wet blanket, Digs; it doesn't suit you. I know you're dying to see what's on the other side," Polly said.

"Perhaps a bit," Digory admitted. "Shall we?"

Polly reached sideways and grasped his hand. "Together, then."

They walked forward through the crack in the world.

\---------------

The passage was chill, shadowed, and thankfully brief: a half dozen steps through a non-place that felt oddly dank and close, as if they were walking through a cave filled with ancient roots and gnawing creatures best left unseen and unknown.

They emerged into a new world blinking back tears against the sudden return of light and space. The wind on the other side was, if anything, even stronger than what they had left behind. Digory lost his hat immediately and Polly only caught hers by her fingertips. Still hand in hand, they looked around to see where they had arrived.

The sun shone halfway up the inverted bowl of the sky, more like a pinprick than an orb: so tiny Digory could have blotted it out entire with the tip of his smallest finger at arm's length, but so searingly white it was edged with blue like the heart of a flame. He couldn't bear to look anywhere near it for more than a second at a time.

There were no trees to obstruct the light or the wind, merely coarse blue-green grass that made a rippling, two-foot-high carpet over the ground. The gateway itself was clearly marked out by two glasslike black stone pillars and a massive lintel, the whole structure roughly twice Digory's height. The faint, shimmering web of magic strung itself across the opening: a good sign for their chances of returning home.

The island itself seemed oblong, perhaps half a mile wide and twice again as long. A low central ridge acted as a sort of geologic backbone, from which point the ground dropped gently off into what seemed like utter nothingness. Peculiar banks of dense fog drifted across the otherwise blue and featureless horizon.

There was no sign of the missing rower.

"This is a right mess," Digory said, raising his voice to be heard over the wind. "It looks like someone had a go at creating a world but gave up partway through. Just this little bit of earth and then nothing at all. Well, at least it's nothing with some light and color. I'll take that over utter blackness."

He peered around, wondering if his voice would draw any attention. No one appeared. The wind blew through the grass, indifferent.

"Have we even got into the same world that our missing rower did?" he continued. "Or wait, do you remember how our adventure in Narnia seemed to take no time at all in England? There's no reason time should flow at the same rate in two different worlds. What if he's been here for years and years already? What if he's died?"

Polly didn't seem to be listening to him. "Digory," she said. "Those banks of fog. I think they're clouds."

Digory blinked and took a closer look. "Surely not."

"We're in a new world. Anything might be possible," Polly said. She dropped his hand, set her hat down in the lee of the gateway, and walked toward the end of the visible grass. Digory followed in her wake, occasionally kicking the grass to see if anything lay hidden underneath.

Polly slowed as she neared the edge of the grass. "I really think they are clouds. We're not surrounded by nothing; we're surrounded by sky. We must be up on a cliff."

Digory, who had rather lost his head for heights since the days he had ridden a winged horse, tensed in alarm. "A cliff? Don't get close to the edge!"

"Don't be ridiculous. How else are we to find a way down?" Polly said. "Look here, if you're so worried, hold onto my ankles while I take a look." She flung herself down onto the ground and wriggled forward until she could peer over the edge.

There was a long silence, broken only by the incessant rush of the wind through the long grass.

"Well?" Digory said from his position by her feet.

"Do you know how I said anything might be possible?" Polly asked. Her voice sounded rather queer, as if she had swallowed a fishbone and were trying not to move her throat too much.

"Yes?"

"We're on an island. And it's floating in the sky. I can't see anything beneath us for, oh, it must be miles. Come and see."

Slowly and carefully, Digory inched forward on his hands and knees and looked down.

The rock and soil slanted back and away, coming to a central ridge underneath the island that mirrored the one above, though as with icebergs the portion of mass underneath was much greater. Here and there great tangles of threadlike roots trailed through the air, giving the whole structure the appearance of a jellyfish swimming through an ocean of air. A flock of puffy clouds scudded briskly to the left, far beneath, and under them, Digory could see nothing but air, growing slowly thicker and hazier until bluish fog obliterated any hope of seeing either ocean or solid ground.

Dizzy and breathless, he threw himself backward to safety.

"Great Scott!" he muttered.

"I know, it gave me a right turn as well," Polly said as she patted his shoulder in a briskly comforting way. "But pull yourself together. It's obviously kept up by magic and we're perfectly safe if we stay a few feet back from the edge. The ground's quite solid. Now stand up and let's see if there's anything useful to be found."

They spent the next hour exploring the floating island and furiously arguing over whether to admit defeat and return through the gate. Digory was sure that people stopped by periodically. There was a wide, stone-lined fire pit near the far end of the island, with chunks of flint and pyrite included to strike sparks, and they found a handful of stone arrowheads as well, scattered haphazardly about. Near the fire pit, a tiny spring of water seeped out between two rocks and trickled into a clear pool perhaps six feet in diameter. The lack of bones surely meant that the missing Oxford rower had been found before he starved, which meant they had a moral obligation to stick around until they discovered his fate.

"Absence of proof isn't the same as proof of absence. He might have fallen over the edge. Giant birds might have carried him away. And even if he did survive, that doesn't mean _we'll_ be found, or that he'll be pleased to have someone come looking for him," Polly said. "Suppose he wants to stay here, like Frank and Helen did in Narnia?"

"We can't know until we find him and ask," Digory said. "Look, let's give it one day. It looks to be midafternoon -- the sun's lower now than when we crossed over -- so we'll stay overnight and leave tomorrow."

Polly grumbled but eventually agreed. "Twenty-four hours, no matter how long days and nights are in this world. Check your watch. How long have we been here already?"

Digory pulled his watch from his pocket. "A quarter past one, and we came through at noon our time. That leaves us nearly twenty-three hours." His stomach growled suddenly, reminding him that it was time for lunch. He'd intended to be comfortably ensconced in a restaurant or pub by this time. "Bother. Twenty-three hours and nothing to eat." He ought to have brought a sandwich. Then again, he hadn't been expecting an adventure.

Polly smiled at him in a triumphant way and pulled a packet of toffees from her pocket. "Nothing, you say?"

Digory couldn't help but laugh at the bizarre familiarity of the moment. "Still carrying those about?" he said.

"An awful lot of people like to make reporters wait before they give interviews. It's worse for me than for the boys. I learned to be prepared," Polly said. She sat down near the fire pit, tucked her skirt around her knees and shins to keep it from flapping in the wind, and kicked off her shoes. "So. As we have twenty-three hours to fill and I've already told you about my latest adventures, why don't you talk my ears off about dusty old philosophy the way you've been dying to do since we met at your aunt's house last night."

"Dusty!" Digory said. "There is nothing dusty about Plato."

Polly smiled. "Prove it."

Digory did his best to meet the challenge.

\---------------

As the tiny, blue-white sun dropped toward the western horizon -- which was a strange experience on the floating island, since the light shone on _below_ them well after the island itself blocked any direct sunbeams -- Polly suddenly stood up and pointed toward the north.

"I say! Is that a cloud or might it be another island?"

Digory, interrupted in his analysis of _Meno_ and _Phaedo_ and their various implications for the whole enterprise of education, blinked at the distant shadow: a low, dark bar stretched across the sky. "It might be either," he said after a moment. "Strange! The wind is very strong up here, but strong enough to blow stone and earth about as if they weighed no more than water vapor?"

"If stone and earth can float, then why not?" Polly said. "Let's pile grass in the fire pit and make a signal flame. Perhaps someone will see and come fetch us."

"We've no way to know whether there are people on that island -- assuming it is an island -- nor whether they're friendly," Digory said.

"We've no way to know they're _not_ friendly, and we'll never find that poor rower if we don't try to get off this island and meet the locals," Polly said, which was a fair point so Digory joined her in gathering armfuls of grass and stacking them into a heap. Then Polly, who had practiced camping skills more recently than Digory, made a little kitten-nest of a few shredded, dried-out blades, took the flint and pyrite, and struck them firmly together until she got a live spark. Shortly the whole pit was filled with billowing flame. Sparks whirled up and away, streaming off the edge of the island like a tattered red-gold banner.

They peered off into the gathering dusk, and presently an answering tongue of fire leapt up on the approaching island. Then a slimmer shadow detached itself from the bulk of the land, lit a lantern near its tip, and set off toward them at a rapid clip.

"Ha!" said Polly. "A skyship. Rescue is at hand."

Digory felt a spiteful urge to say something about Charn and recklessness, and how at least he had learned his lesson, but he thought better of that in time. Instead, he and Polly waited in silence while the other island slowly lit with tiny sparks of light that mirrored the stars springing to life above. The sky was immense, stretching above and beside and beneath them, and the night was both blacker and brighter than any he had ever seen: great wheels and sprawls of jewel-like stars set in velvet darkness, more close-set than the constellations of Earth, and far more brilliant than the arch of the Milky Way.

"I wonder if they sing?" he said to himself. The stars in Narnia had, but these seemed more like the ones in his own world: spheres of gas burning millions of miles away in empty space.

"I don't think this is that sort of world," Polly said. "These stars are beautiful, though. I wonder what stories people tell about them."

"We can ask."

"That's true," Polly agreed. "First we should put more grass on the fire, so our rescuers don't get lost in the dark. Stars aren't reliable navigation aids if the land can blow with any gust of wind."

They fed the signal fire three times before the skyship drew up alongside their floating island. It was not terribly long and very narrow for its length, with two masts each carrying a single trapezoidal sail; the foremast also supported a jib. For a moment Digory thought the captain intended to run aground, but the crew reefed the mainsails neatly and efficiently and drifted through the final stretch of air with only the jib to catch the wind. Though the starlight was nearly as bright as a full moon, it was by now too dark to make out the crew in any detail and Digory knew better than to assume they were human. He thought they seemed roughly human-shaped, though, and they certainly had hands of some sort to manage the rigging.

Polly cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "Hello! Do you speak English?"

"English?" a high-pitched voice shouted back, so heavily accented the word sounded more like _eeeng-leeess_. "Eko! You come Christopher world!"

"Yes!" Polly said.

"Go back! We anchor!" the captain shouted.

As Digory and Polly moved hastily away from the edge, several ropes tipped with heavy stone spikes shot out and slammed into the ground. Something creaked onboard -- winches, perhaps? -- and the ship edged slowly sideways until it touched the island's rim. Somebody shoved a broad ramp over the edge, and a handful of people scrambled from the deck to solid ground, bringing a lantern with them.

Now Digory could see that they were clearly human. The one in front -- presumably the captain -- was a tall woman with dark brown skin and her hair shaved off except for one slender braid at either temple. Beside and slightly behind her stood three men and another woman, all equally tall, dark-skinned, and bare-headed save for those same small braids: at the temples for the woman and at the nape of the neck for the men. They wore loose, colorfully-patterned trousers and shirts bound tight with cords around their wrists and elbows, ankles and knees. The captain had a truncheon at her waist, with sharp stone flakes embedded in two parallel lines along its length, like a makeshift saw-toothed sword.

"I name Tsindi Eyamaranga," she said in halting, broken English. "You name?"

"Polly Plummer," said Polly, "and this is Digory Kirke. Polly, Digory," she repeated, pointing at each of them in turn.

"Polly, Digory," Captain Eyamaranga repeated. "You come Christopher find?"

"Yes," said Digory, though he had no idea what the missing rower's name was.

"Come Christopher take? He talk always he world. He heart sink, he breath choke," the captain said. "We try help, but we world no he home."

"Yes, we'll take him home," Polly said.

Captain Eyamaranga clapped her hands. "Good! We bring food. You no leave curse land. Gate close. We take you Ngirupinda, come Christopher send home." She nodded, a brief mark of recognition, then turned and climbed the boarding plank back to her ship. The four sailors promptly spread out along the edge of the island and began messing about with the anchor ropes.

"Did you catch all that?" Digory asked Polly in an undertone. "How are they going to take us to this Ingu-- Ngirpu-- this Ngirupinda place if we mustn't leave this island?"

Polly shrugged. "Magic? But I think it's important. She implied that the gate will close if we leave. That must be why the rower -- Christopher -- hasn't already gone back to England. He doesn't seem to be a prisoner, judging by how Captain Eyamaranga talks about him."

Digory turned and looked back into the starlit darkness that concealed the gateway and its massive stone frame. "Lucky this lot found us rather than anyone who didn't know about Christopher, or about how the gate works."

"Yes, rather," said Polly. "Oh, I say! Look what they're doing with the ropes."

While some of the skyship's crew had gone up and down the boarding plank carrying mysterious supplies to the ground, others had arranged the anchor spikes into a spreading fan pattern, and their partners onboard had moved the other ends all to the stern of the ship. The jib unfurled and caught the wind, and the whole ship slowly swung around to point directly away from the island. Then the mainsails tumbled down and snapped taut, the anchor ropes pulled tight, and with a great creaking shudder, the floating island began to move.

"They're towing us!" Digory said, delighted at the sheer improbability of it all.

"Ooh, I wonder -- can they move their _own_ island as well?" Polly asked. "It did come on so fast, and I doubt the wind was so very different over there. Perhaps they have sails, or perhaps the trees simply catch the wind better than this rubbish grass."

"I suppose we'll find out," Digory said. "In the meantime, let's go see how they plan to feed us. Toffee for supper is even less satisfying now than when we were smaller."

\---------------

The four sailors who had stayed on the island set up shop next to the dying remnants of the signal fire, which they fed anew with actual chunks of wood, to produce a smaller, tamer blaze, supplemented by two lanterns enclosed in elaborate shields against the ever-present wind. In that small pool of light, they spread out a blanket and covered it with several wooden bowls: two large and a half dozen smaller ones, each with a wooden spoon.

"How--?" Polly said, uncertainly.

"Utsu," one of the sailors said. She pointed at her own eyes. "Utsu ke. Yemane." She picked up a round, thin, flat piece of bread from one of the large bowls and spread it onto her left palm. Then she dumped two spoonfuls of a chunky paste from the other large bowl into the center of her palm, poured a bit of reddish liquid from one of the smaller bowls over that, and lifted the edges of the thin, floppy bread to wrap the whole thing up. "Yemane," she said again, and took a bite.

"Oh, it's like pasties or crepes," Digory said. "But what are they filled with?"

"There's only one way to find out," Polly said. She sat down beside the blanket and held her hand over the bowl of bread. "May I?" she asked.

The sailor smiled and tapped the fingers of her empty hand against the heel of her other palm. "Jinda ke. Yes good yes," she said, and took another bite of her wrap.

The filling turned out to be dollops of bean-and-meat paste, largely tasteless on its own, as was the bread. The flavor was provided by the sauces: one sweet and vaguely cinnamon-flavored, one like salty and half-rotten fish, one like Worcestershire sauce mixed with catsup, and one so hot it made tears run from Digory's eyes and obliterated his ability to determine its actual flavor. After that, Digory stuck firmly to the tomato-Worcestershire and looked askance at Polly who was eating both the fish sauce and the spice-of-death sauce with every indication of enjoyment.

"Is your mouth made of iron?" he asked.

"It's no worse than a back-alley curry," Polly said. "I can't always be bothered with proper sit-down meals when I've deadlines to meet, unlike you posh ivory tower types."

" _Posh?_ "

"Your father owns an estate, Digs," Polly said cheerfully.

"All right, he does then, but he didn't always. Besides, it's not as if you didn't spend every summer there for ages."

"Yes, but there's a difference between having posh friends and being posh oneself."

"Oh, stuff and nonsense! It's not as if you're scrabbling your way up from nothing. Those are very nice row houses your parents and my aunt live in," Digory said, shaking a half-eaten and rather sticky wrap in her face. Polly swatted his hand away and, warming to her point, began to enumerate precisely how posh his family was, talking right over Digory's attempts to interrupt.

There was a comfort in this familiar bickering: a piece of England to hold onto in the great, drowning strangeness of this foreign world. But there was only so long they could spend on their old pet arguments, however lyrical Polly grew in her descriptions of the hot-houses and vineries on the Kirke estate, and soon they trailed off into silence. The wind rushed through the grass, the stars wheeled slowly overhead, and the ropes creaked as the skyship pulled the island across the endless sky.

The four sailors began to clean up and put away the bowls and blanket. Digory leaned forward to help, but was waved back with a smile and a quick, unintelligible phrase. "Sorry," he said, feeling a bit awkward and useless. "Thank you. It was very good."

"Good yes," one of the sailors agreed. "Pangara ke tsa?"

"I have no idea what that means," Digory said in an apologetic tone.

The sailor shrugged and tipped his hand palm-upward, as if casting something onto the wind. "Andja wo tsingandja," he said. "Yes no good."

"Eko! Ika ke, ika alo, yes good yes," the lady sailor said, tapping her fellow crewmember on the head as she returned from stowing the remnants of dinner. She smiled as she sat down with her back to the dying fire, gestured with both hands as if gathering something in, and began to speak. She didn't pause, evidently not expecting or soliciting a response, and after a minute Digory recognized the cadence of her words as a recitation. Or a story, perhaps.

When she finished, the other sailors muttered something in unison, too fast and indistinct for the individual words to register. Then she opened her hands and gestured toward Digory and Polly in clear invitation.

They looked at each other. "You first," Digory said. Polly nodded, and began to tell the story of their first adventure between worlds.

They traded mutually incomprehensible stories for a while before Digory pointed to his throat and grimaced. They didn't need to shout in order to hear each other over the wind, but they did need to speak more forcefully than expected for a small group sitting close together. He preferred not to talk himself hoarse.

The sailors clapped and smiled in understanding and began to talk casually amongst themselves, leaving Digory and Polly to their own devices.

"I wonder why we can't understand them," Polly said after a while. "Or no, that's backwards. We didn't understand the writing in Charn until the spell worked on us a bit. It makes sense for different worlds to have different languages, just like different countries do on Earth. What I wonder is why we could understand all the Talking Beasts and Beings in Narnia."

"I've always thought that might be due to Frank and his hymn," Digory said. "Aslan created that world by singing, but we sang first, in English. That's bound to have had an effect."

"You're probably right," said Polly. "Which makes me wonder what might have happened if he'd picked a-- a pub drinking song or some-such instead. Not at all the right impression to give a world as it's being born."

Digory thought about that. Then he burst into badly stifled laughter. After a moment Polly joined in.

Before either of them had got back under control -- a task made much harder every time they looked at each other, for few things are quite so contagious as laughter -- a cacophony of voices rang out from up ahead. Captain Eyamaranga shouted the others down, and the floating island shook as the skyship reefed its sails and extended banks of oars from either side: long poles tipped with canvas blades like miniature sails or the arms of a homemade windmill. Someone began to beat a drum. The oars dipped and swung in rhythm, and the ship and island slowly began to turn.

Polly leapt to her feet. "Look! It's a galley as well as a sloop. Oh, we must be nearly to the big island-- to Ngirupinda, I mean. The wind is so strong, it must be terribly easy to crash if they're not careful."

The four sailors packed away the remnants of the meal and hurried over to the island's edge. One called out across the sky toward the lantern-speckled darkness of Ngirupinda. Somebody called back, and then a series of ropes and stones flew across the gap. The crew secured them firmly into the earth, then called back and forth as the people on the mainland tightened the ropes until the little island drew close enough for someone to throw across the end of a rope bridge. Two of the crew set about fastening that securely, while the others returned to the fire pit and began to unfasten the skyship from the island.

"Bando ke. Uyofa bando ke," one of the sailors said to Digory and Polly. He pointed at the ground and nodded. Then he pointed at the bridge and said, "No. Meyala ke no bad," and crossed his arms as if blocking their passage. "No!" he repeated, and stamped his foot to emphasize the point. Then he and his partner hurried over the rope bridge and vanished into the noisy crowd on the edge of the big island.

Digory and Polly looked at each other. "Well then," Digory said. "I suppose we're back to waiting."

They ambled back toward the fire pit, where they discovered the two remaining sailors had not only removed all the anchor ropes, but vanished off the island -- crossed over to their ship, most likely. And so they sat down to wait for Captain Eyamaranga, Christopher the rower, or some new person to venture onto the little island and explain what would happen next.

"We should sing something," Polly said presently.

"A pub song?" Digory suggested.

Polly shook her head. "No. A hymn." She tipped her head back and stared upward at the brilliant stars, flung in careless, extravagant swirls across the sky. "Do you know 'Creator of the Stars of Night'?" She hummed a few bars of the tune.

"I may have heard it once or twice," Digory said. "Sing and I'll join in when I can."

\---------------

They ran through that hymn, and Frank's one about harvest thanksgiving, and 'Amazing Grace,' after which Digory had had enough of hymns and switched over to 'Greensleeves,' which somehow led into a series of Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs.

Meanwhile people bustled up and down along the edge of Ngirupinda, calling to one another, moving parcels, passing lanterns back and forth, and once rowing a small two-seater skyboat underneath the rope bridge. Digory watched this activity with absent disinterest. He thought that any other time, he would be eager to learn as much as he could about this strange new world, but he had been awake for over twenty hours, and the darkness and the events of the day were conspiring to mute his interest in anything beyond the possibility of a soft bed and a blanket to keep off the incessant wind.

He and Polly were stumbling awkwardly through the Major-General's song from _The Pirates of Penzance_ when the chaos on the shore swirled into something more organized. The lantern-carriers shifted into two lines and the shadows of three people moved purposefully between them toward the bridge, then across to the little island where they stopped and waited in a pool of light and shadows.

"Hello? Captain Tsindi says you speak English. Are you from Earth? Are you from _England?_ " a man asked.

He sounded almost afraid of the answer.

"Yes, we're from England," Digory said. "I'm Digory Kirke, this is Polly Plummer. Are you one of the Oxford blues?"

"I was," the man said as Digory and Polly walked toward the rope bridge. "My name is Christopher Tannen. I fell into this world in 1912, nearly two years ago. Can you tell me what's happened in England since I've been gone?"

"Your crew were arguing with the umpire when we noticed you were missing and decided to look for you," Polly said. "Time passes strangely between worlds. I shan't be surprised if we all return at the same moment Digory and I left."

"That's impossible," Christopher Tannen said.

"So is falling from one world into another, yet here we are," said Digory. He and Polly were now within the circle of lantern-light, and he took the chance to study Tannen. Two years in a strange and magical world had left him somewhat thinner than he expected a Boat Race rower to be, but his clothes were clean and no different from those of the captain beside him, and nobody had forced him to adopt the local hairstyle. "Captain Eyamaranga told us not to leave this island or the gate would close. Since we haven't left, I presume we can all go home as soon as you wish," he added.

"Captain Tsindi," Tannen corrected him, and the captain herself clapped softly in agreement. "The Andjanga don't have family names, but their dream-names serve a similar purpose and they put those first." He stepped forward, one hand lifting involuntarily as if he thought he could reach out and touch the gateway from where he stood.

He was missing three fingers down to the base.

"Great Scott! What happened to you?" Digory cried. "We thought at first we might have to rescue you, but Captain Eya-- Captain Tsindi seemed friendly. And yet those scars--"

Tannen waved his maimed hand. "Oh, these?" he said. "Yes, I did need a rescue, but you're a bit late on that front. The captain saved me. To make a long story short, when I came through the gate a pirate skyship was anchored to the forbidden island. They thought I might serve as a curiosity in the slave markets of the Seventy Isles, or at least a useful oarsman. The captain was chained aboard the same ship, along with Lady Oboja, the daughter and heir of Ngirupinda's thunder priestess." He indicated the tall young woman on his other side, who wore a long, split-seamed black robe over the ubiquitous rope-bound trousers. "We helped each other escape and take the ship."

Lady Oboja coughed into a closed fist, and the captain seemed to be biting back a smile.

Tannen paused, then continued in an embarrassed tone, "Well, really they did all the work. I simply provided a distraction which they took advantage of. I had developed a fever from infected wounds and was convinced I'd either gone barking mad or had fallen into the Thames and was having a vivid hallucination while drowning. Rushing the pirate captain seemed like a reasonable way to break the illusion."

"On the theory that dying in dreams wakes you up?" said Polly.

"Yes," said Tannen. "Fortunately, it didn't work. Lady Oboja and her mother offered me sanctuary on Ngirupinda. It's not a bad life, but I didn't want to leave England and I would very much like to go home."

"We will be sad to say farewell to Christopher," Lady Oboja said in a low, clear voice, touched by a fainter version of Captain Tsindi's accent. "He has been a true friend, and he has shared his healer's training with us to our gain. But it's cruel to take a hawk from the sky or a hare from the earth, and we would be no better than the slavers of the Seventy Isles if we kept him from his home."

"If you lend us a lantern to keep us from walking off the edge of this island, we can go immediately," Digory offered.

"No, wait," said Polly. "Remember, we may well return the moment we left, or at least very shortly thereafter, which would be right about noon. I think we should all get what rest we can tonight and leave in the morning, to minimize the shock of the crossing."

"I still think that sounds impossible," Tannen said. "Time doesn't simply _stop_ , and in any case, it will be obvious I've been away for longer than a minute or two." He raised his hand again by way of illustration.

"We'll cross that bridge when we reach it," Polly said firmly. "Right now, I have been awake for far too long and I would like some sleep."

Lady Oboja and the captain exchanged a speaking look over Tannen's head. Then the captain turned and shouted across the rope bridge, stirring the waiting crowd back into motion. "We will bring bedrolls and raincloth," Lady Oboja said. "The navigators say we sail for clear skies, but the weather gods are as changeable as the sun is steady and it's wiser to prepare for mischance than find it unarmed."

Tannen said a phrase in a questioning tone. When Lady Oboja clapped softly, he smiled and added, "Better safe than sorry."

Lady Oboja repeated the phrase to herself, then nodded. "Yes. Just so. I will keep the records of English, should others from your island cross through the hole in the world. I ask only that you keep records of Andjangibu, should the gateway ever open in reverse."

"I will," Tannen said solemnly.

Digory nudged Polly with his elbow. "Do you think they...?" he whispered into her ear.

"I think it's none of our business, and besides, you of all people should know men and women can love each other as friends without anything else having to shove in," Polly whispered back.

"Yes, but--" Digory began.

Then a small flood of people poured over the bridge, carrying bundles of fabric, and the moment was lost.

\---------------

They spent the remainder of the night on the inland side of the fire pit. Captain Tsindi showed Digory and Polly how to anchor their bedrolls to the earth with stone spikes -- "The sky islands have hardly any metal," Tannen said when Digory remarked that iron would be more convenient -- and thus keep themselves from shifting close to the edge in their sleep.

Digory found it harder than he expected to fall asleep. Exhaustion pressed down on him like a weight, but the wind in his ears, the knowledge of how close he was to a deadly plunge through miles of air to an unknown surface, and the brilliant unfamiliar stars overhead conspired to nudge him back to twitchy wakefulness every time he drew close to dreams. Finally he rolled over, buried his head underneath the thin, squashy pillow, and attempted to recite the _Odyssey_ in the original Greek until he drifted off.

He dreamed of sirens with the wings of great birds of prey, giants that strode from cloud to cloud, and a ship sailing away from Ithaka, its great oars lifting it from sea to sky, where it dwindled into the western sun.

He woke with an unexpected longing to see England once again: its solid earth, its patient rivers, and its prosaic stars half-hidden by city lights. But that need wasn't pressing. He could get home any time he wished. Until then, he wanted to see as much as he could of this new world.

Dawn came as strangely as dusk had: light suffusing upward from beneath the land long before the tiny, blazing sun came level with the edge of the island, let alone shone down from above. Digory watched the display in silence for a time, then stood and wandered toward the rope bridge.

Ngirupinda seemed much larger in the light of day -- so massive that as he looked left and right he couldn't see where it ended and the open sky began, and when he looked straight across it might have been as vast as England itself. The edge was lined with mooring slips and quays, with hardly any barrier between ground and sky. Beyond the skyfront, low wooden houses, brightly painted in all the colors of the rainbow, sprawled out into a prosperous town just starting to wake and fill its streets with people. And beyond that, the ground heaved itself upward into gentle, tree-covered hills, from which strange towers poked up here and there, spreading canvas-decked arms to the wind.

He couldn't imagine what kept it all aloft.

He wished he had the time and chance to find out.

Eventually he heard voices behind him, and returned to the little camp around the fire pit where Captain Tsindi was busy shaking the others awake, regardless of protests. When he reappeared, the captain promptly set him to rolling up the bedding while she crossed over to the mainland to fetch some breakfast.

"I see Captain Tsindi's claimed another crewman," Tannen said as he knelt to help Digory fasten the last bedroll.

Digory shrugged. "She knows what she's doing. I don't." He paused and glanced toward the vast, tempting bulk of Ngirupinda. "Will the gate really close if Polly and I leave this island?"

"Yes," said Tannen.

"That is how the gateway works," Lady Oboja said, appearing suddenly behind them. "It's a hole in the world which we cannot seal or destroy. When someone or something comes through, they lock the gate open until they return through it or leave the forbidden island."

"Digory and I came through together, though," Polly said. "What happens if one of us goes to Ngirupinda while the other stays here? Could we take turns to visit, so one of us is always here holding the gate?"

"So long as one person stays, the gateway remains open," Lady Oboja said. "Armies have come through that way. But only one of you could cross to Ngirupinda. Once you leave, you break your connection to the magic."

Digory looked at Polly, who was looking across the grass and the gap to the town and its surrounding hills. Something wistful, almost hungry, drifted across her face. "Digory, I know it's not fair to ask..." she started to say. Then she stopped, shook her head, and sighed. "No, that's selfish. We came here to take Christopher home. We shouldn't make him wait."

Tannen glanced back and forth between Polly and Digory. "It's been two years. One more day won't matter."

Now it was Digory's turn to sigh. "I'd love to. But no. I won't go without Polly."

"Well, I can hardly run off on my own now, can I?" Polly said with a wry smile. "You're a terrible person, Digory Kirke, making me live up to my better nature."

"You do the same for me," he told her.

Fortunately Captain Tsindi returned with breakfast before the moment could grow awkward. The meal was a variation on the previous night's dinner, only with a mix of green vegetables and egg custard in place of the beans-and-meat. This time, Digory avoided all the proffered sauces.

And then it was time to return home.

They walked the length of the little island and stood before the gateway, still shimmering in its frame of ominous blue-black stone.

"I've always wondered why the pirates didn't try to cross through themselves," Tannen said, mostly to himself. "They were already outlawed. Why should they care that the gateway is forbidden?"

" _Because_ they were outlawed," Lady Oboja said. "People with no home and no gods have nothing left but luck. Why risk the curse? For all they knew, you might have been fleeing a dying world, or the scout for a great fleet."

Tannen laughed, somewhat bitterly, and said something in Andjangibu. Captain Tsindi replied sharply and slapped her fist into her open palm. After a moment, Tannen sighed and clapped his hands in agreement.

"Would you like a moment alone?" Digory said awkwardly as Polly retrieved her hat. He brushed his coat and trousers, but nothing could hide the water and grass stains, nor the wrinkles that came from treating them as pyjamas.

"No," Tannen said. "I said everything important last night. This is just a formality." He addressed the captain and Lady Oboja briefly in their own language, bowed deeply from the waist, and then turned back to face the gateway.

"We should hold hands, to make sure we all arrive together," Polly said. She held out one of her hands, the other keeping a firm hold on her hat. Tannen gingerly clasped her fingers with his maimed hand. After a moment, he held out his other hand for Digory to take.

"Ready, then?" Polly asked.

"Yes," said Tannen.

Digory drew a deep breath, and they walked through the gate.

\---------------

The passage between worlds was as unpleasant as before, leaving Digory with a sensation of phantom cobwebs and small, skittering insects on his skin, but they neither tripped nor turned and emerged safely between the willows of Chiswick Eyot. Polly lowered her hand to scrub at her face and promptly lost her hat to a gust of wind.

"Of all the luck!" she said. "I liked that hat."

"I'll buy you another," Digory said. "Listen, do you hear the crowd? I do believe it's the same day. You were right, Pols; we came back the moment we left. I bet nobody's even missed you yet," he added, turning to look at Tannen.

Tannen ignored him in favor of staring down at his clothes, which had mysteriously reverted to a soaked rowing uniform. He dropped Polly's hand and raised his own, spreading all five fully present and unscarred fingers.

"Impossible," he said.

"Nonsense. It clearly happened, which means that, as Mr. Holmes often said, however improbable it must be the truth. You're back in the right world at the right time with the right body and clothes." Digory gestured toward the river. "Your crew is waiting, and I believe you have a race to win."

"It's been called off," Polly said. "I will bet you a pound."

"You're on."

Tannen glanced between them in bemusement. "How can you take this so calmly? I was in that world for two years, and now there's no proof. Even the gateway is gone!" This was true; the shimmer and shadows between the willows had vanished, leaving nothing but ordinary branches and one intricate cobweb with a fat spider perched in its center.

"We've been to other worlds before," Polly said. "A long time ago. We saw one die, and one born, and the place between all of them. The world is bigger and stranger than most people admit, and once you know the secret you can't go back."

"Besides, you have your memory. That's perfectly sufficient proof, philosophically speaking," Digory said. Then he coughed. "If I were you, I wouldn't try to tell your crewmates where you've been. It's best not to share these things with people who haven't had their own adventures. I'm at Magdalen College, though, if you ever want to talk."

"If I told the lads, they'd think I'd got into the chemicals from the teaching hospital," Tannen said. He looked wonderingly at his hand again, then squared his shoulders. "Right. I may take you up on that offer someday, but today, if you'll excuse me, I have a race to win."

He marched forward through the scrubby trees and the long grass, down to the shore where the rest of the crew had given up arguing with the umpire and were climbing back into their boat.

Digory and Polly followed more slowly, and watched the crew row off into the choppy, rising water. When the boat vanished around the bend, heading toward Barnes Bridge, Digory held out his hand to his best friend.

"It's been a long day, and I don't care who wins the race, or even if it's been called off. We'll find out soon enough from the papers," he said. "Right now, let's go home."

**Author's Note:**

> The 1912 Boat Race was called off when both crews sank due to adverse weather. There is some disagreement over precisely when and for what reason the umpire made his decision, since the Oxford crew relaunched their boat and continued to the finish point despite a brief conversation with him. There is an apocryphal report that one rower -- possibly C. Tinne, the number two position -- briefly went missing and claimed he had gone off to chat with an acquaintance from New College. The race was rescheduled for two days later, whereupon Oxford won handily.
> 
> I have taken the liberty of changing C. Tinne to Christopher Tannen, medical student, partly to avoid potential complications, and partly because the England of the Chronicles is demonstrably not our own. In our world, after all, Sherlock Holmes and the Bastable family, whom Lewis references at the start of MN as if they were real, are fiction rather than fact. Differences in university boat crews are a minor matter compared to that. :-)
> 
> [Some further thoughts on this story and my writing process are available [here on my journal](http://edenfalling.dreamwidth.org/798780.html)]


End file.
